Smarter Email Marketing Services

Successful—and that’s the operative word—email marketing can take your business to new heights.

Even better, it’s a pretty straightforward endeavor:

If you want your email marketing to be successful, it must be centered on building and fostering relationships.

Content is a valuable and necessary part of your marketing efforts, but it doesn’t even come close to the importance of establishing rock-solid relationships with your customers—current and future.

Consider this:

In his 2016 book The Content Trap: A Strategist’s Guide to Digital Change, Bharat Anand—the Henry R. Byers Professor of Business Administration in the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School—makes the case that businesses of all sizes across the nation (and world!) face two related challenges: getting noticed and getting paid.

Well, it’s borderline impossible to have the latter without the former!

If you want to get paid, you need to get noticed.

(Actually, we’d like to expand on this notion and say “you need to get noticed AND remembered.”)

And that essentially sets up Anand’s general premise:

A business that wants to be economically viable needs to make connections. Email marketing is a prized possession in your marketing toolbox to get this done.

Why Email Marketing Works

When scientists rank the respective sciences, psychology tends to be placed toward the bottom of the ladder.

This makes sense because:

Biology > Psychology

(since our brains utilize biological processes)

Chemistry > Biology

(since chemical reactions drive biological processes)

Physics > Chemistry

(since chemicals are formed by protons, neutrons, and electrons whizzing around at subatomic levels)

(Math is actually above them all and widely considered to be “the pure science.”)

WARNING – If you’re a scientist, prepare to cringe.

In the world of marketing—and we happen to know more than a thing or two about this—psychology (and its first cousin, sociology) is king over all.

That probably seems a bit intuitive. Let’s make it more concrete with a specific example:

Abraham Maslow was a highly influential American psychologist best-known for establishing “Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.”

When you look at human motivation, we are all—you, me, your customers—driven by needs and wants. Maslow took the fairly obvious notion that humans are motivated to have certain needs met before others, and established a ranking (hierarchy) of which are most important.

At the bottom two levels (that is, most important), you find physical and security needs. These include food, water, air, shelter, and safety.

The majority of people in the U.S. are pretty set on these, but the next level is where things start to get interesting from a marketing perspective.

After physical and security needs, you will find social needs.

See, at our core, humans are social creatures.

We have an innate need to connect with others.

Time for a callback:

Successful email marketing is centered on building and fostering relationships.

Our brains are wired to crave social connection. After all, forming tribes with fellow humans was instrumental in our species’ survival during ancient times.

We might not have to band together to fight off predatory animals anymore, but that wiring is still there in our brains.

If you provide valuable content to customers via emails, it helps to fill the need for social connection—and that is a powerful, natural force.

How to Use Email Marketing Effectively

When you have a clear destination in mind, you want to get there in the most direct route possible.

And that takes planning.

In this case, the metaphorical destination is the consciousness of your customers.

The question is:

How can you use email marketing to convert leads to customers?

Well, different people might try taking different paths to arrive at the same destination. But most will never get there.

We have a time-proven roadmap, though, and it looks a little like this:



List Organization.

This is a matter of trimming old and inaccurate contacts, and then segmenting it all (so content goes to appropriate recipients).

Without proper organization, your “Happy Birthday” email is sent to the non-birthday-celebrating patient who should have received a “We Hope You Enjoyed Your Colonoscopy” email.

Whoops.



Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

The epicenter of your email marketing strategy. It allows you to connect regularly with customers and provide relevant information at consistent touch-points.

Basically, a well-organized CRM enables you to stay front-of-mind and relay additional solutions you offer to solve the problems they have.

w

Engage Your Leads

Delivering interesting, useful information right when your current and future customers happen to need it shows just how valuable your company is.

More than that, engaging customers is instrumental in cultivating brand ambassadors—and this is where the rubber really meets the road for business growth.

Brand ambassadors enthusiastically tell others about your business and are often repeat customers. Need an example? Apple has millions. You may even be one of them!



Data Tracking, Compilation, and Analysis.

To randomly send out emails, hoping they’re effective, and not taking any further steps isn’t a mapped-out plan—it’s basically driving around with your windshield painted black!

It might be theoretically possible you’ll arrive at your target destination, but we’re not betting on it. (Also, we’ll be staying off the sidewalks for a while.)

Keep your windows clean and see where you’re going by effectively utilizing data.



Retarget Lost Opportunities.

Maybe the timing wasn’t right the first time around, but email marketing allows you to reconnect and remind them that you have exactly what they need.

A

B

Valuable communication with customers who are interested and excited to hear from you.

Big difference.

When your branding is effective and memorable, customers think of you first, and are more likely to choose you over your competition when they have a problem you can solve.

But to be effective, your branding needs to be powered by intelligent and consistent graphic design.

Remarkable ROI — But Doesn’t Come Easy

In an apparent contradiction, email marketing is straightforward, automated, and … challenging?

Yep.

You can automate processes and use list segmentation to make things easier, but you also need to give constant attention and fine-tune the system on a periodic basis.

More than that, you need to have:

Clever subject lines

Email is kind of pointless if people don’t, you know, actually open the emails. Subject lines matter!

Interesting, engaging content

Having an email opened is good. Having the email read all the way through to your call to action is a million times better.

Visually appeasing graphics

Looks shouldn’t matter when it comes to people, but they’re quite important for getting your emails read.

If you want to capture and track metrics, fine-tune your email campaigns, and create compelling, powerful content that drives action—all while operating the inner workings of your company—kudos to you.

If you’re more realistic, though, you may realize this is a ton of work and it requires skill.

We live for that kind of work and just happen to be awesome at it. So if you want to get an email marketing program up and running, you know who to call.

Interested in building better relationships with your leads and customers? We can help! Contact us today to find out what we can do for you and your business.

Successful—and that’s the operative word—email marketing can take your business to new heights.

Even better, it’s a pretty straightforward endeavor:

If you want your email marketing to be successful, it must be centered on building and fostering relationships.

Content is a valuable and necessary part of your marketing efforts, but it doesn’t even come close to the importance of establishing rock-solid relationships with your customers—current and future.

Consider this:

In his 2016 book The Content Trap: A Strategist’s Guide to Digital Change, Bharat Anand—the Henry R. Byers Professor of Business Administration in the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School—makes the case that businesses of all sizes across the nation (and world!) face two related challenges: getting noticed and getting paid.

Well, it’s borderline impossible to have the latter without the former!

If you want to get paid, you need to get noticed.

(Actually, we’d like to expand on this notion and say “you need to get noticed AND remembered.”)

And that essentially sets up Anand’s general premise:

A business that wants to be economically viable needs to make connections. Email marketing is a prized possession in your marketing toolbox to get this done.

Why Email Marketing Works

When scientists rank the respective sciences, psychology tends to be placed toward the bottom of the ladder.

This makes sense because:

Biology > Psychology

(since our brains utilize biological processes)

Chemistry > Biology

(since chemical reactions drive biological processes)

Physics > Chemistry

(since chemicals are formed by protons, neutrons, and electrons whizzing around at subatomic levels)

These sorts of decisions should never be made carelessly. Because if your design is boring, cluttered, or confusing, you aren’t going to keep your customer’s attention and you aren’t going to make that sale.

WARNING – If you’re a scientist, prepare to cringe.

In the world of marketing—and we happen to know more than a thing or two about this—psychology (and its first cousin, sociology) is king over all.

That probably seems a bit intuitive. Let’s make it more concrete with a specific example:

Abraham Maslow was a highly influential American psychologist best-known for establishing “Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.”

When you look at human motivation, we are all—you, me, your customers—driven by needs and wants. Maslow took the fairly obvious notion that humans are motivated to have certain needs met before others, and established a ranking (hierarchy) of which are most important.

At the bottom two levels (that is, most important), you find physical and security needs. These include food, water, air, shelter, and safety.

The majority of people in the U.S. are pretty set on these, but the next level is where things start to get interesting from a marketing perspective.

After physical and security needs, you will find social needs.

See, at our core, humans are social creatures.

We have an innate need to connect with others.

Time for a callback:

Successful email marketing is centered on building and fostering relationships.

Our brains are wired to crave social connection. After all, forming tribes with fellow humans was instrumental in our species’ survival during ancient times.

We might not have to band together to fight off predatory animals anymore, but that wiring is still there in our brains.

If you provide valuable content to customers via emails, it helps to fill the need for social connection—and that is a powerful, natural force.

How to Use Email Marketing Effectively

When you have a clear destination in mind, you want to get there in the most direct route possible.

And that takes planning.

In this case, the metaphorical destination is the consciousness of your customers.

The question is:

How can you use email marketing to convert leads to customers?

Well, different people might try taking different paths to arrive at the same destination. But most will never get there.

We have a time-proven roadmap, though, and it looks a little like this:



List Organization.

This is a matter of trimming old and inaccurate contacts, and then segmenting it all (so content goes to appropriate recipients).

Without proper organization, your “Happy Birthday” email is sent to the non-birthday-celebrating patient who should have received a “We Hope You Enjoyed Your Colonoscopy” email.

Whoops.



Customer Relationship Management (CRM).

The epicenter of your email marketing strategy. It allows you to connect regularly with customers and provide relevant information at consistent touch-points.

Basically, a well-organized CRM enables you to stay front-of-mind and relay additional solutions you offer to solve the problems they have.

w

Engage Your Leads

Delivering interesting, useful information right when your current and future customers happen to need it shows just how valuable your company is.

More than that, engaging customers is instrumental in cultivating brand ambassadors—and this is where the rubber really meets the road for business growth.

Brand ambassadors enthusiastically tell others about your business and are often repeat customers. Need an example? Apple has millions. You may even be one of them!



Data Tracking, Compilation, and Analysis.

To randomly send out emails, hoping they’re effective, and not taking any further steps isn’t a mapped-out plan—it’s basically driving around with your windshield painted black!

It might be theoretically possible you’ll arrive at your target destination, but we’re not betting on it. (Also, we’ll be staying off the sidewalks for a while.)

Keep your windows clean and see where you’re going by effectively utilizing data.



Retarget Lost Opportunities.

Maybe the timing wasn’t right the first time around, but email marketing allows you to reconnect and remind them that you have exactly what they need.

A

B

Valuable communication with customers who are interested and excited to hear from you.

Big Difference

When your branding is effective and memorable, customers think of you first, and are more likely to choose you over your competition when they have a problem you can solve.

But to be effective, your branding needs to be powered by intelligent and consistent graphic design.

Remarkable ROI — But Doesn’t Come Easy

In an apparent contradiction, email marketing is straightforward, automated, and … challenging?

Yep.

You can automate processes and use list segmentation to make things easier, but you also need to give constant attention and fine-tune the system on a periodic basis.

More than that, you need to have:

Clever subject lines

Email is kind of pointless if people don’t, you know, actually open the emails. Subject lines matter!

Interesting, engaging content

Having an email opened is good. Having the email read all the way through to your call to action is a million times better.

Visually appeasing graphics

Looks shouldn’t matter when it comes to people, but they’re quite important for getting your emails read.

If you want to capture and track metrics, fine-tune your email campaigns, and create compelling, powerful content that drives action—all while operating the inner workings of your company—kudos to you.

If you’re more realistic, though, you may realize this is a ton of work and it requires skill.

We live for that kind of work and just happen to be awesome at it. So if you want to get an email marketing program up and running, you know who to call.

Interested in building better relationships with your leads and customers? We can help! Contact us today to find out what we can do for you and your business.